Florida girl recovers after home alone ordeal

A two-year-old girl is recovering from a three-week ordeal in which she managed to survive on ketchup, mustard and dried pasta when she was left home alone after her mother was sent to jail.

The child is recovering from malnutrition but is in good condition at Wolfson Children’s Hospital, Jacksonville, Florida, police said.

“She’s sitting up in the bed and laughing and playing with the nurses,” said hospital spokesman David Foreman.

The child’s father, Ogden Lee, who is separated from the child’s 22-year-old mother, Dakeysha Telita Lee, said he had been trying to contact the mother for two weeks and did not learn until Sunday that she was in jail.

When a manager let him into the apartment on Monday, the girl was lying in a baby’s bathtub, covered with a towel and was watching cartoons. She was filthy and covered with dry ketchup, he said.

“She grabbed me and wouldn’t let go of me,” Lee said. ”It is really a miracle how good a shape my daughter is in. I don’t know how she did it.”

Lee, 33, said the girl had dragged the food, toys and other things into her mother’s bedroom, where he found her.

The child opened the refrigerator and got into a pantry, eating anything she could find, including dry spaghetti and macaroni, Sheriff John Rutherford said.

“She managed to stay alive for 19 days,” he said. ”She’s quite a scrapper.”

Leaford James, who lives across the road from Dakeysha Lee’s apartment, said he had heard crying from the apartment “but nothing to get suspicious about”.

The little girl had been left alone since her mother was jailed on September 10 for aggravated assault and petty theft. The mother has now been charged with child abuse.

The Department of Children and Families is investigating the case to determine where the child should be placed.